My friends and family have all been telling me that in recent years with the growing inequality in San Francisco that both house and car theft have been on the rise. People in broad daylight are being robbed in their own neighborhoods for everything from their phones to their jewelry. And sadly, as I’m driving through different neighborhoods, whether it’s in the Richmond District where I grew up and where my parents still live, or in different parts of the Mission and South of Market, I notice cars with broken windows everywhere. I’ve also noticed that more houses have security system signs in their windows or by their front doors to try to scare off potential burglars. Even my friend’s mom’s house, which is a short walking distance from my parents’ house, had their garage broken into, but fortunately, they couldn’t break open the door leading upstairs to the main house.

While at dinner tonight with my parents, cousin and his wife, and my uncle, my cousin’s car, which was parked just in front of the restaurant we were dining at on a very busy street, had its back passenger window smashed. My cousin drives a pretty high-profile car, a Tesla Model 3, and apparently it’s been a known type of vandalism because there’s a way for a burglar to get access to the Model 3 trunk by breaking the back window. My cousin didn’t have anything in the trunk, so at least they had nothing stolen. None of us even realized that the tiny side window was smashed until my dad was reaching for his seat belt and noticed the broken glass and the draft, not to mention the glass shards all over the back area of the car.

I felt really bad when I found out this happened. He and his wife drove all the way up from Sunnyvale just to have dinner with me because I was in town, and this happened in the only 1.5 hours that we sat down at dinner together. It made me so upset to think that this is what this city is becoming, where people are scared to park their cars anywhere, even in very high foot-traffic areas, because they are constantly fearing vandalism and theft by people who have nothing else better to do with their lives. Owning a car here has its own cost in this respect.